Friedrich Merz struggles to get word in as US president focuses on record of former German leader who left office in 2021
Donald Trump has heaped criticism on the former German chancellor Angela Merkel for opening up her country to refugees, telling her successor: “I told her it shouldn’t have happened.”
During an appearance with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Thursday, Trump was asked about the sweeping travel restrictions on 19 countries that he announced the previous day.
“We want to keep bad people out of our country … of course, you have a little problem too with some of the people that were allowed into your country,” Trump said to Merz, in an apparent reference to a number of attacks in Germany involving refugees.
Merz replied: “Yes we do,” before Trump continued: “It’s not your fault … It shouldn’t have happened. I told her it shouldn’t have happened, but it did. But you have your own difficulty with that, and we do.”
